Abstract: The lifelong accountability system is an important institutional innovation in the fight against corruption that can play an effective role in practice in corruption prevention of leading officials. This system, however, is open to further discussion as new issues and challenges keep surfacing in its application. The lifelong accountability system deepens zero-tolerance anti-corruption from the temporal and spatial dimensions, utilizes the unity of lifelong accountability to eliminate the heterogeneity of the system environment, solves the problems of untimeliness of public supervision and unequal status of both parties, and reflects the core values of lifelong supervision in curbing power corruption, restraining human weaknesses, and ensuring social fairness. In the path of institutional improvement, the regulatory function of the lifelong accountability system can be improved in practice by clarifying the applicable forms of responsibility for lifelong accountability, improving the procedural settings for lifelong accountability, and strengthening the government’s credibility in lifelong accountability.

Key words: lifelong accountability, fight against corruption, institutional innovation